Body-coupled communications (BCC) or body-based communication has been proposed as a as a basis for body area networks (BANs) as standardized by the 802.15.6 Task Group of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). BCC allows exchange of information between a plurality of devices which are at or in close proximity of a body of a human or an animal. This can be achieved by capacitive or galvanic coupling of low-energy electric fields onto the body surface.
In body-coupled communication (BCC) systems information is transmitted from a transmission device to a receiver device via signals across the user's body. Body-coupled communication may utilize an electric field to transmit information.
Body-coupled communication (BCC) uses the human body as communication channel. It enables wireless communication over a human body between devices that are in contact with that human body. Signals are conveyed over the body instead of through the air. As such, the communication is confined to an area close to the body. Therefore, communication is possible between devices situated on, connected to, or placed close to the body.
Reference is now made to FIG. 6 which shows a known start of packet (SOP) detector 203. A data packet 300 is received which has a field contain start of packet data. The start of packet detector has a reference SOP buffer 601 which has reference SOP data, an SOP buffer 602 which receives the SOP from the received data packet, and comparison circuitry 603. The comparison circuitry will determine if there is a match between the reference SOP and the received SOP and provide an appropriate output 604. The comparison circuitry may use a parallel multi-bit correlation (PMBC) approach to detect the SOP data in the received message.
US2012/027149 describes a synchronisation detector where matches are checked between a continuously fed shift register and a single reference word.
EP0549247 describes a synchronisation detector for a D2 MAC system where the result of comparisons for odd and even frame synchronisation sequences are OR′d together.
JPS6133040 describes and analogue synchronisation detector.
CA2215380 describes a coding systems and apparatus which has synchronisation detector.
This technique works well in a number of situations. Where the signal-to-noise ratio is low, the detection can become less reliable and a typical solution is to make the SOP longer. However, with increased lengths of SOP, the increasing complexity and power consumption of the SOP detector may be disadvantageous in certain applications.